Khan Academy now Common Core aligned

Free website includes thousands of exercises for helping students prepare for the new standards at their own pace, founder Sal Khan announced

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Each student will get his or her own learning dashboard to show progress toward mastery of the standards.

Over the last few years, Sal Khan’s free Khan Academy[2] website has become a go-to resource for teaching and learning math skills. During the annual CUE[3] conference in Palm Springs, Calif., on March 22, Khan announced a major expansion of the website that will help prepare students for Common Core math testing.

“While the standards may be common, we know that students are not—they each have their own learning journey,” Khan said. “This is why we are committed to personalized learning that lets students practice what they most need help on, at their own pace, at absolutely no cost.”

Khan Academy now includes thousands of new, interactive math problems[4] fully aligned to every Common Core math standard in grades K-12. Created and reviewed by 40 math educators, these exercises focus on conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and real-world applications of math.

Khan Academy users can search for exercises that address each strand within the standards by grade level. Every single problem for every single standard is accompanied by a step-by-step solution created specifically for that problem.

What’s more, Khan unveiled new grade-level “missions” aligned with the Common Core, to help students work through these exercises at their own pace. Each student will get his or her own learning dashboard that uses state-of-the-art, adaptive software to identify learning gaps and show progress. Students also will receive badges, energy points, and avatars as they complete each mission.

(Next page: New teacher resources from Khan Academy as well)

To make sure the materials are rigorous and fully aligned to the Common Core, Khan enlisted the help of several organizations involved in the design and assessment of the new standards, including Illustrative Mathematics and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

“Khan Academy has helped to make the Common Core math standards come to life in my classroom,” said Shelby Harris, a seventh grade teacher in Kuna, Idaho, who piloted the new content, in a press release. “It is my go-to resource when lesson planning, and my students are more prepared than ever.”

To help teachers prepare their students for the Common Core, Khan Academy is offering several new teacher resources as well, Khan said. For example, teachers can use a new Common Core Map[5] to quickly find math exercises by standard and assign them to students. They also can use real-time reports to track each student’s progress toward meeting the Common Core standards at any time throughout the year and identify which students might need more attention.

CUE (formerly the Computer Using Educators) is a professional learning organization devoted to educational technology. Nearly 5,000 K-12 educators and administrators gathered in Palm Springs for the group’s 2014 annual conference.